BY THE REV. ~R. E. WHEELEE, M.A. 293 



"At about half-past one, the number of the meteors had sen- 

 sibly diminished ; and by two o'clock was reduced to compara- 

 tively few. 



"Several flashes of lightning were seen in the course of the 

 night ; and a slight appearance of aurora borealis was perceived 

 in the north. 



"A bright clear sky, during the whole of a November night, 

 the absence of the moon, and the position of our own part of 

 the earth, with reference to this group of meteors circulating 

 round the sun, have presented a combination of circumstances 

 very favourable for the present observations." 



These very grand meteoric showers recur regularly every thirty 

 third year. There are, most probably, a number of concentric 

 rings of these meteoric bodies circulating about the sun. The 

 earth in its annual course around the sun cuts through these 

 rings on certain days of the year, that is, in certain points of 

 its orbit, and this explains the annual recurrence of showers on 

 certain days. " The, majority of these rings," remarks Mr. Car- 

 penter, of Greenwich Observatory, ' ' of which there must be a 

 goodly number, have their meteoric particles evenly distributed 

 throughout their circuit ; but the November ring is not of such 

 equable density, for its compound particles and masses are very 

 thickly clustered in one part and scantily dispersed over the 



remainder The size of this November ring is slightly less 



than the orbit of the earth, revolving round the sun in a period 

 of three hundred and fifty-four days, or eleven days less than 

 that of the earth's period. The direction of its motion is oppo- 

 site to that of the earth, and the orbit is inclined to the earth's 

 orbit by an angle of about seventeen degrees. The portion of 

 the ring which constitutes the thick cloud of bodies is about 

 one-fifteenth of its circumference, or in linear measure about 

 forty millions of miles, while the breadth of this cloud is about 

 one hundred thousand miles. "We dash into the midst of this 

 cloud at the rate of eighteen miles a second, and its members 

 fly on all sides around us with a flight of the same speed." 



At Greenwich Observatory, where every possible care was 

 taken to ensure extreme accuracy, an account was kept of the 



